Three Histories
by R-I-C-A-R-D
Summary: Three different Shepards, three diffrent histories. All in one volume for your reading pleasure! Reviews appreciated.
1. Spacer Shepard

**Author's Note:**I wanted to write a short chapter relating to each of the possible pre-service backgrounds the player can choose for Shepard in Mass Effect. Three Shepards, three histories, all in one handy fic! Call within the next fifteen minutes and receive a free set of steak knives! But wait! There's more! :)

**1. Spacer Shepard**

If asked that timeless question, 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' many children offer up a range of ambitious if a tad fantastical answers: doctor, nurse, astronaut, police officer, firefighter, corporate drone in middle management.

Emily Shepard on the other hand, always gave the same answer, even at a young age. And that answer was, "I'm going to enlist in the Alliance Navy like my parents." There, simple as that.

Emily's parents were Navy. Their parents were Navy. Their parents _parents _were...and you get the idea. Family history held that Shepards had fought in every major conflict in Earth's history. Usually on the winning side too. That ill-advised tilt at pro-slavery back in the Civil War notwithstanding. Supposedly a Shepard that Emily could trace her ancestry to had fought in that long ago war but she'd never found any proof either way.

For Emily, there had never been any question of her wanting to do or be anything else. Her parents had never made any deliberate attempts to sway her in the direction they themselves had taken but a child doesn't grow up in a military family, steeped in the sometimes arcane traditions and ceremonies, doesn't see her parents going to work every morning wearing a uniform that included a sidearm and think to herself _Maybe I'll be a brain surgeon._

But the road that led to the point of enlistment threw the young lady a few unexpected surprises along the way.

Sixteen year old Emily sat at her desk. And it was definitely 'her' desk: she'd carved Em Shepard's Desk into the wood-grain facsimile one day early on in the school year when the teacher's back was to the class. Teacher was, at least in her own mind, preparing her young charges for life in the galaxy. A life that would almost undoubtedly mean contact with the host of non-human species that humanity now shared the galaxy with. Unless the students retreated back to the cradle of civilisation, built themselves a log cabin out in the middle of nowhere and lived out their lives as recluses who came into town once a month to buy supplies...and more ammunition for the small arsenal of weapons they kept for the inevitable fall of civilisation.

Presently the teacher was using a slideshow presentation and droning on about the life cycle of the hanar. Precisely why the class of twenty-five humans needed to know about the life cycle of what at first glance appeared to be giant luminescent jellyfish was never explained to Emily's satisfaction. Despite this, she dutifully sat straight in her chair and took notes as required.

Emily was what her teachers tended to call 'well rounded' which wasn't a reflection on her physique. Emily took after her father - tall and on the slender side. She had her mother's blonde hair and blue eyes. An ill-advised attempt two weeks ago to change her hair colour to what the home dying kit assured her was 'chestnut brown' had resulted in her hair turning a truly eye-hurting shade of pink that repeated washings hadn't yet dulled.

Even now, Emily scowled at the memory. _The model on the packaging was probably a natural brunette as well!_ _That's gotta be false advertising!_ A baseball cap jammed onto her head kept the bulk of her electric-pink hair covered but a few strands peeked out here and there, as though to taunt her.

Emily maintained grades good enough to avoid appointments with the guidance counsellor over her failure to meet her full potential but not good enough to make her stand out as the class geek. That singular 'honour' rested on the scrawny shoulders of Elliot Goode, seated a row behind her and probably even now mentally undressing her. As well as maintaining solid B+ grades, Emily was also good at sport but again, not so good as to be branded a tomboy. Whatever the hell that was.

She was on the high school girls' basketball team and could be counted on to come off the bench to sink a few three-pointers in the dying minutes of the fourth. Her free throw accuracy was horrendous, though.

So young Emily maintained good-but-not-outstanding grades and was athletic without being mistaken for a boy at twenty paces. A boy with electric-pink hair, God save her.

Emily shot a glance at the digital clock on the wall above the electronic blackboard which was actually white and sighed. Twenty minutes until music class. Oh somebody kill her now, please. It wasn't that Emily had been raised by crazy folk who thought music was the tool of the devil but she'd been saddled with the violin when the rest of the kids had ended up with 'cool' instruments.

The music teacher, a short roly-poly little man with a nasally voice had taken one look at the young Emily at the start of the school year and declared, "Young lady, you are a natural violinist!" and proceeded to jam a violin into her hands.

_Natural violinist my ass!_ Emily thought. More likely she'd ended up with the violin because she'd been ten minutes late to class - had been held up by Elliot's truly shocking attempt to chat her up after maths class. She shuddered internally at the memory. _Emily, may I just say what a singular honour it is to find myself in the presence of such an image of grace and beauty._ Which would have sounded kind of sweet...if Elliot's gaze hadn't been aimed firmly at what little cleavage had been visible inside her blouse.

So, there Emily had been, standing in the doorway of room 101, ten minutes late for the first day of music class and everybody else had already laid claim to the 'cool' instruments. David and his twin sister Krystal Simmons had bagged the drum kit and bass guitar respectively. Tommy Sanchez, who everybody knew carried a massive and unrequited teen crush on Krystal had called dibs on the blue and white Fender electric so he could at least jam in the same group as Krystal even if she refused to acknowledge his existence.

And so it went on down the class. Hell, somebody had even called shotgun on the tambourine and the maracas for Godsake. And Emily could actually see herself with a tambourine in hand, occasionally supplying backing vocals whilst the rock-band-in-training did their thing. Which, usually, was to deafen all in attendance with a massive wall of noise that resembled actual music in the same way the Wright Brothers' aircraft resembled an airliner.

So, the violin it was and ten minutes into the first class, her neck muscles had been screaming in agony from the unnatural positioning of her head and neck required to play the horrid thing. She sighed and looked over at Tommy who had just discovered the joys of drop D tuning and was hammering out power chords with wild abandon. _I hope he breaks a string_ she thought darkly.

The bell rang, jolting Emily out of her reverie. Before the class could bolt for the door, the teacher called out, "Don't forget, class: I want a thousand-word essay on the hanar reproductive system by next week!" This announcement was greeted with much groaning and eye rolling.

As Emily collected her books and headed out the door, Elliot hustled up beside her.

"Hi," she said, pulling her school bag over her shoulder.

"H-hello!" he said back. Then: "Can I walk you to class?" Emily looked into his eyes, a pale and watery brown and cringed inwardly. Why had he latched onto her of all people? Why not Krystal like every other guy in her year level? Emily looked at Krystal and could understand the appeal for the boys: tall, shapely, she wore short skirts and low cut blouses that emphasised her breasts...not that they needed emphasising. "Tits from here to Tuesday!" another classmate had said approvingly.

Emily sighed. "I guess," she answered, feeling what little enthusiasm she had for music class die entirely.

As they walked to room 101, Elliot said, "So, you're playing the violin, huh?"

Emily nodded.

"Do you like it?" Elliot pressed when she added nothing further.

"Not really, no."

"Oh. 'cuz if you want to swap..."

"Swap?" Emily replied. In class, Elliot played the _othe r_electric guitar, a beautifully crafted Ibanez of polished black wood. "Are you sure?" she asked. _He's only offering just so he can use it screw a favour out of you later, you realise that, don't you, Em?_ The voice in her mind whispered.

"Sure I'm sure." Elliot nodded enthusiastically. "I find something...soothing about the sounds a violin makes and in truth I find that guitar a little heavy slung across my shoulders for a full lesson. So you'd actually be doing me a favour."

_Shyeah right and humans are gonna get a seat on the Council inside my own lifetime._ _Oh and humans'll be accepted into the Spectres, too!_

Instead all Emily said was, "That'd be great! I really appreciate it."

Emily smiled broadly and was able to forget, for the next hour at least, the mess she'd made of her hair.

**A/N: **Inspiration for Emily of the Electric Pink Hair comes from my own high school days: a blonde girl I knew tried to dye her hair and it came out bright pink. I _think_ she was aiming for something brown.

Also, I have nothing against violins or the people who play them, I just can't picture myself with one. And on a purely unrelated note, drop D tuning is when you tune the sixth string of a guitar, which is normally E to D and you can play chords just by barring the strings with one finger instead of having to use two or more fingers. Then you can go nuts playing songs that are basically one power chord after another after another after...


	2. Earthborn Shepard

**2. Earthborn Shepard**

To say that Natalie was hungry was something of an understatement right up there with aliens are weird. A gurgling growl that sounded like a caged beast sounded from the young girl's stomach. Natalie hadn't eaten for almost two days...if you could call a packet of expired cinnamon donuts she'd pulled from the dumpster behind a supermarket eating. When she'd emerged from the depths of the dumpster, prize in hand, she'd been covered in filth. Even now, after attempting to bathe in the freezing water from a busted fire hydrant down the block, she could smell herself.

Her hair, black, oily and matted hung limply to her shoulders and was horribly knotted and tangled. Her eyes, a deep blue were sunk low in her gaunt and drawn face. She was sixteen but life on the streets had wrung her out and she more closely resembled the thirty something hooker who plied her trade on various street corners. Chronic lack of proper food had left Natalie with an all-too-prominent ribcage and the bones in neck stood out like knobs. The good news, if you could call it that, was that her borderline malnutrition had left her almost completely devoid of breasts and she hadn't yet caught the attention of the types of people who grabbed girls off the streets and...did things to them.

In addition to the hunger pangs now clawing at her insides, Natalie had picked up a cold and her nose ran constantly. Sniffling, she wiped her nose with one mucus-encrusted sleeve of her tattered sweater. All her clothes, bought from thrift stores when she had actual money to spend, seemed to be tattered. Her jeans were gone at the knees in exactly the same way people paid hundreds of credits in stores in order to achieve the 'distressed' look. _I'll give those stupid pricks distressed!_ she mentally cursed as she walked along the gutter. Her destination, in the distance was a poky little restaurant. Natalie was hungry and was desperate enough to steal food in order to avoid a slow death by starvation.

She wasn't proud of what she'd been forced to do in order to survive. She was white trash. She knew that, didn't mean she couldn't aspire to something more though.

"Aspire to what, Shepard?" Finch had taunted her one day two years ago. Finch was trash too, only he revelled in it. He took every opportunity to knock over well-dressed people and steal their money.  
"It's dog eat dog, Shepard," he'd told her.

"Don't you want to get away from all this?" Natalie had asked, waving a thin bony arm in the direction of the neighbourhood. From somewhere in the near distance, she heard a woman screaming then a dull thump and a man roaring "Shut up, bitch!"

"And what'll you do instead, huh?" Finch answered and leaned in towards her, quiet fury in his eyes.

"You got no papers, so you can't get a proper job, you can't get fake papers, even shit ones 'cause you got no money and you can't even turn tricks like them whores in the gutter cuz frankly, Shepard, no man would be desperate enough to actually pay for sex with you!"

"You're a shit of a human being and I hope you _die_, Finch!" Natalie had yelled back at him, "I hope you fucking die!" She stormed out of the crumbling apartment blocked the Tenth Street Reds had claimed as their own and disappeared into the cold and uncaring night.

Now she stood beneath the shadows cast by a stately elm tree on the opposite side of the road from the restaurant. A flickering neon sign proclaimed the place to be Gino's.

"OK, what now?" she asked herself. "Cuz I am _so_ not going rooting around in the dumpster just so I can get a pack of month-old donuts!"

Natalie wasn't a strong girl, she couldn't just knock a person over and steal their takeout like Finch would. She didn't even know what she was _doing_in the Reds. She had no real skills to speak of beyond using an old omni-tool to override cryptolocks on occasion.

As Natalie stood in the shadow cast by the old elm, the roots cracking the surrounding pavement, her nose leaking, a plan began to form: wait for a single person to leave with a bag of takeout, follow them and when there was nobody else around, threaten them at knife-point until they gave up the food. Then run like hell.

Good plan, except she had no blade. Casting around the cracked pavement, Natalie found a rare treasure: a glass bottle that hadn't yet been smashed. Gingerly holding the bottle by the neck, she swung it against the pavement, hoping to smash it. Instead the bottle rapped against the concrete, jumped from her fingers and rolled away. Natalie sighed, feeling tears coming on then tried again. For a wonder, she managed to smash the bottle without cutting herself to ribbons in the process.

Holding her makeshift weapon, Natalie settled in to wait.

A short time later, a middle aged woman in a blue suit entered Gino's. As the door swung open a warm glow from within spilled out onto the street outside and Natalie heard the dull murmur of the customers as they talked amongst themselves. Then the door shut, cutting off the glow and the voices. That door shutting summed up Natalie's entire existence: on the outside looking in. Opportunities constantly denied her. No safe place to rest her weary head. No place to call 'home.'

The same woman exited about ten minutes later clutching the holy grail - a container of takeout food. Natalie's stomach rumbled and her mouth flooded with spit. Quickly and quietly, the young girl slipped across the road and fell in behind the woman in the suit.

_You better hope she doesn't have a car close by or you're screwed_ the little voice in her mind supplied. Head darting around like a chicken's, Natalie made sure nobody else was around before she jogged to catch up with her intended victim. She took a deep breath, clutching the bottle with suddenly damp hands and yelled, "Give me the food or I'll cut ya!"

Well that was what she'd _meant_ to yell out. What came out instead was a strangled squawk. The woman turned to face her, raised an eyebrow and said calmly, "Get lost before I call the cops, girl."

Natalie inhaled sharply, wiped her nose and tried again, "I ain't foolin' with you! Give me the bag!"

The woman clutched the container close to her chest and began backpedalling. Throwing caution to the wind, Natalie dropped the bottle, lunged forward and closed both hands on the bag. A short tussle ensued as they fought for possession of the food. Natalie cringed as the woman clipped her around the ear then, feeling a sudden burst of rage, Natalie shoved the woman backwards just as hard as she could. The woman emitted a surprised cry then her head hit the pavement with a sickening thud. The woman's body jerked once then she lay still.

Natalie stood over the woman, trembling uncontrollably. What had she done? All she'd wanted was some food. And now she'd killed a person. Falling to her knees, Natalie laid her head on the woman's chest, hoping to hear her breathing. Maybe she wasn't dead, maybe she was just really really hurt? So the voice of hope yammered in the frightened young girl's mind.

Natalie sat like that for a long time, head lying on the woman's still chest, food lying forgotten in the gutter. The young girl's shoulders heaved with silent sobs. She cried not only for the woman whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time but she also cried for herself.

At some point, the sobbing ceased and she fell asleep right there on the street, with the dead woman as a pillow. In one of those perverse moments intended to make people stop to wonder what was wrong with the world, not one person paused in their comings and goings to check on the woman and the girl. Not one.

---

The next morning Natalie stood up, grabbed the food that still lay untouched and ran back to the relative safety of the apartment. Shaking with fear and spent adrenaline, Natalie wolfed down the now-stale food, feeling her guilt build even as her hunger faded. She was a horrible person, she told herself. She must be. Why else would her own parents have abandoned her to this?

For the first time in her sixteen years, Natalie's thoughts turned to suicide. Why not end it all? Who'd miss her, after all? Finch? Yeah right. Finch loved three things in this world: himself, money and sex. In that order. He wouldn't even notice she was gone. And there was no family to mourn her passing. Oh sure, there were probably cousins somewhere maybe even a brother or sister who'd not had the bad luck to be abandoned as she had been but they didn't know she existed so why would they give a crap? One less homeless kid, right? Who gave a rat's?

Screaming at the top of her lungs, Natalie shouted at the sky, "Who gives a fuck?" Chest heaving, she slammed a fist into the wall of the bedroom she called hers. Her hand gave a sickening crack as it punched through the crumbling plaster. Cradling her hand, Natalie sank to the mattress on the dirty floor and cried.

"The fuck you whining about now?" Finch spoke from the doorway.

Without looking up, Natalie mumbled, "I killed a woman."

Finch laughed, "No shit? And here's me thinking you weren't good for nothing!"

Furious at him, Natalie shouted, "It isn't funny! She's dead! Because of me!"

"Yeah, and? People die all the time. If _you _died, you think anybody'd care?" Finch said calmly. He left before she could answer. Natalie had no answer anyway. She cried herself to sleep for the second night in a row.

Sometime during that long night, something that had long percolated in her subconscious took flight. There _was_ a way for her to get out of this life. She'd need to save up enough credits for fake papers, _good ones_ and even then they may not be enough but she had to at least try. Hell, wasn't the Alliance always on the lookout for more meat to throw into the grinder? And what was she, if not meat?

As dawn's first light filtered through the grime of the bedroom window, countless motes of dust dancing within, Natalie emerged from her tearful slumber renewed. Two more years. All she had to do was survive the next two years and then, with hope, she'd be able to enlist.

For the first time in a long time, Natalie Shepard greeted the new day with hope in her heart.


	3. Colonist Shepard

**3. Colonist Shepard**

Fishy was dead. Catilin learned this when she woke up on the morning of the high school dance and wandered downstairs for breakfast. The fish tank was positioned against the west wall of the living room. Beside the tank sat a half-full container of fish-flakes. The inside of the tank bore pieces of coral and miniature castles and houses for the fish to swim amongst. The aerator attached to the tank bubbled to itself as it pumped air into the water. Fishy floated at the top of the water, bobbing gently up and down as the aerator disturbed the water.

The _other_ goldfish swam around as normal, occasionally pausing by the corpse of his erstwhile tank-mate to nudge the body before swimming on.

"Oh Fishy..." Caitlin whispered as she stood before the tank. With a sigh, she picked up the small net lying alongside the tank, scooped out Fishy and held him over the tank to allow the excess water to drip back in.

"Caity? I something wrong?" her mother called from the living room door.

Caitlin turned to face her, holding the deceased Fishy. "Fishy's dead," she said.

"Oh," her mother said, hands knotting together momentarily around her blouse before they relaxed. "Honey, I'm sorry."

Caitlin's slim shoulders shrugged. "It's OK. I'd feel bad for Goldie if I didn't know fish only have 3 second memories." Turning back to the tank, Caitlin said, "He probably doesn't even remember that there ever was a second fish in there."

Caitlin left the house and entered the back yard, angling towards the patch of ground she occasionally thought of as 'the burial plot.' The early-morning grass felt cool against the soles of her bare feet and dew on the grass wet her feet as she walked. Stabbed into the ground of the burial plot was a small hand shovel. Gently laying the net and Fishy on the ground, Caitlin knelt on the ground, wet grass soaking her nightgown and dug a shallow depression in the slightly muddy earth. Caitlin deposited Fishy in what was to be his final resting place and scraped the earth back over him.

Closing her eyes, Caitlin said a few words, "O Lord, please make sure the immortal soul of Fishy safely gets to Fish Heaven. Amen." She didn't really believe in Fish Heaven or in any kind of heaven really but it didn't feel right to just dump Fishy in the ground and forget about him. As she stood up again, a thought struck Caitlin: for a sixteen year old, she'd seen an awful lot of death. Oh, she wasn't stumbling across dead people all the time but the pets in the Shepard household seemed to have a scarily high mortality rate.

Besides Fishy, buried in the back yard were two other goldfish, a canary who had chirped pretty much continually for three years before he stopped chirping, a cat, a hamster and the stray dog she'd adopted two years ago. And now Fishy joined them and all that was left was Goldie in the fish tank suddenly too large for him. Not that he'd mind.

Caitlin paused by the door that led into the kitchen to wipe her feet on the door mat. Back in the house, she returned to the fish tank, tapped in a few flakes of food and watched as Goldie swam up to nibbled at them. Her responsibility as a pet owner thus met, Caitlin joined her mother at the breakfast table. Caitlin wondered about that: why it was referred to as 'the breakfast table' in the morning and 'the dinner table' at night. It was, after all, the same table. A large, heavy piece of pine with four wooden chairs, also pine arrayed around it.

Caitlin's father was already at work, likely working the tractor at the Branson farm about ten kilometres away. Peter Branson, a senior in high school had asked her to be his partner for the high school dance. Her, a gawky-looking sixteen year old kid who'd worn braces for three years - they'd only just come off. Caitlin had been surprised that he even thought about her at all; she didn't consider herself to be a spectacularly pretty girl. Her skin was too pale, and she didn't tan in summer. She burned. There was a spray of freckles across her nose which was slightly upturned. She was too tall and skinny compared to most of the other girls in school. She had no hips and no bust. She didn't even need to wear a bra for Godsake. She felt like she possessed the body of ten year old boy.

Still, Peter Branson, the guy who was everybody's best friend had asked her, Caitlin Shepard to be his partner for the high school dance. She felt equal parts elated and terrified.

"Are you excited about the dance?" her mother asked her over breakfast.

"Yes," she said and could even now feel something churning in her stomach.

Her mother looked like she might cry as she said, "Oh, my little girl is growing up! Already the boys are running after you!"

"Mum, for Godsake! They're not _running after me!_ I can't even think why Peter would even ask me at all."

"Because you're a sweet, intelligent young woman. And don't say 'godsake,' it's blasphemy," he mother replied. Caitlin half-expected her mother to cross herself. And maybe flash the sign of the evil eye just in case God should be watching.

Caitlin often wondered how it had happened - humans packing up their religion along with the rest of their crap when they'd first began colonising new worlds.

"Gee," she imagined the early colonists saying to each other, "You think maybe we should bring the church along with us?"

"Ayuh, can't be too careful."

To her mother she said dryly, "I noticed you didn't call me 'beautiful,' just sweet and intelligent."

"Honey, you're plenty beautiful in your own way," _oh way to stick the knife in ma! _"Besides, beauty fades. Intellect is forever. Just look at old Marge Pickins down the road a bit. Twenty years back, she was crowned Miss Mindnoir. Oh all the boys wanted a piece of _that_ action. Dumber than a bag of rocks though, that woman. Nowadays, her looks are faded and nobody will even look at her. And she's _still_ dumber than a bag of rocks."

"Uh...huh," Caitlin said as she bit into a slice of toast and jam, "So you're saying Peter is turned on by my brains and not my tits?"

"Caitlin Shepard! Wash _out _your mouth, young lady!" her mother seemed about to explode with apoplectic rage. Caitlin just rolled her eyes.

---

There's a certain amount of protocol and a number of unwritten rules that apply when a boy asks to accompany a girl to a school social event. One such piece of protocol is the boy arriving to pick up the girl a full twenty minutes early and having to wait while said girl finished getting ready. Boy, meanwhile, spent those twenty minutes under the uncomfortable and intimidating gaze of the girl's father. A man who looked as though he could benchpress the boy and who gazed at him with a flat look that seemed to say, "For some _unfathomable_ reason I can't even begin to guess at, my girl likes you and I'm trusting you with her life. Boy, if you do _anything _to upset my little girl, I'll make you regret it. And have her safely home by eleven at the absolute latest, d'you hear me?"

Peter Branson, in a suit rented for the occasion fought the urge to fidget in the armchair Caitlin's mother had invited him to sit in...before she'd left the room entirely, leaving him to share an uncomfortable silence with Cait's father. In his hands Peter held a corsage. He meant to pin the corsage onto the bodice of Caitlin's gown but instead decided, upon looking into those flat blue eyes of the man opposite, that it might be safer if he simply handed Cait the corsage and let her pin it on herself.

God only knew what might happen should the old man witness him even _accidentally _brushing a hand over his daughter's chestal area. Peter gulped.

"Would you like a glass of water?" Cait's father asked.

"No...no thank you, sir," Peter managed to get out through a suddenly dry mouth. All the moisture in his mouth seemed to have migrated to the palms of his hands which felt all manner of slimy right then. Discreetly he wiped his palms on the pants of his rented suit. The sound of footsteps from upstairs caused him to turn his head towards the staircase. He stood up as Caitlin appeared at the top of the stairs.

Peter's mouth fell open. Caitlin looked amazing. He'd always thought of her as pretty even before now but it was like she was being lit from within and her face seemed to glow. She was dressed in a simple cream gown with her red hair piled atop her head in an intricate swirl. A matching silk scarf was wound around her neck.

"Caitlin...you look..." Peter trailed off as she stepped from the bottom step and crossed the space to stand beside him.

"I think 'beautiful' is the word you want," her mother said from behind them. They turned to see Mrs Shepard with a holocamera in hand.

Following yet another piece of unwritten tradition, Boy and Girl stood beside one another, arms around the other's waist and posed for the pre-dance photograph.

In later years, as an officer in the Navy, Shepard would sometimes look upon that picture and wonder what her life would have been like if the batarians hadn't...but it hurt her to think of the raid. So she would simply remember the good times she had before it happened.

Now, however, as Caitlin posed with her date, she felt no fear, nor despair, nor grief. She felt a pure kind of happiness untainted by cynicism. She felt carefree.

"Now, Peter, I want you to see my daughter safely home..."

"by eleven at the latest," Caitlin parroted and smiled. "It's OK, dad. You don't have to wait up for us."

"Damn right I have to wait up," he said as he pulled her into a hug. "You have a good time, my sweet girl."

"I will."

---

As Peter walked arm in arm with Caitlin along the driveway to her house at exactly 10.50pm, he wondered if he had the courage to kiss her goodnight. Everybody thought he was brave. He was on the football team and had taken hits that should have broken him in half then gotten up to keep playing but right now, as he walked Caitlin home, he felt terrified.

They arrived at front door. A soft warm glow spilled out from beneath the closed door; somebody was still up.

"I had a really nice time," Caitlin said softly and he had to lean forward a little to hear her voice.

"So did I," he said. Oh, smooth, Pete, real smooth! "I was wondering if..."

Caitlin smiled slightly and he wished she'd do that more often, she had a really nice smile. "Wondering if what?"

"If I could kiss you goodnight?"

Caitlin nodded and said in an even softer voice, a voice like an angel's it seemed, "I'd like that."

Peter bent his head to hers and brushed his lips gently across hers, feeling the warmth of her skin and inhaling the scent of her perfume. For Caitlin, it was one of the happiest times of her life.

The batarians raided Mindnoir two months later.

The End.

**A/N: **I've noticed a lot of fics relating to Mindnoir focus on the raid itself and the aftermath so I thought I'd do a kind of 'day in the life' sort of thing...and then dump in the bittersweet ending because I could. In my mind, the scene with Peter and Mister Shepard is like something from an old TV show or something - an image of a kind of simpler time before things go all to hell.

I hope you enjoy those little scenes, and if so, let me know. If not...well let me know anyway so I can improve.


End file.
